MAPPER to MAPPER C Portation
Some years ago, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, a major aircraft manufacturer,
implemented two large applications in MAPPER on their Unisys 2200 mainframe. These
applications were critical to shop-floor manufacturing operations. In 1997, when
McDonnell Douglas was acquired by Boeing, Boeing's managers wished to reduce data
center costs associated with these legacy applications. Further, the Unisys 2200
no longer complied with new corporate directives for operating systems and hardware
going forward.
Boeing decided to migrate the MAPPER applications to MAPPER C. Once converted, the
MAPPER C applications, running on a Unix platform, had the promise of satisfying
both military and commercial purposes. The newer, more modern hardware would also
provide a substantial maintenance cost-savings to Boeing. Sequent was the winning
bidder for this project, and chose FCI to perform the software and data migration.
However, before the project began, Sequent was acquired by IBM Corporation. So,
FCI worked with IBM system administrators and Boeing database administrators to
implement the migration. The scope of the project required FCI to accomplish the
migration of two applications -- each with 1,300 programs and dozens of complex
interfaces -- on two different hardware platforms for two different divisions. Meanwhile,
the planned termination of the mainframe license dictated a highly aggressive deadline.
FCI completed the migration work on time (within 10 calendar months) and under budget.
The successful production cut-over for these systems was implemented on two back-to-back
weekends in an 8-hour window each.
Due to the successful efforts of the FCI Team, Boeing saved millions of dollars
over the next several years.